The Idea of a Boycott Amuses Me
I have a fair amount of respect for what John Campea, has achieved with The Movie Blog but one of his latest posts just amuses the hell out of me. Over the weekend a fair amount of the movie sites (First Showing, /Film, Film School Rejects, and IESB) reported about a comment by the President of Production for Warner Studios, Jeff Robinov. He was quoted as saying that Warner Brothers is no longer going to be making movies with female leads. Apparently the poor showing of three of Warner Brothers’ movies this summer has not sat well.
John took it upon himself to call for a boycott of Warner Brothers if this was true. This amuses me to no end. Warner Brothers is a first and foremost a business. If they choose to no longer make movies with women in the chief role that is their choice. Is it a good choice, hell no but it is still their choice. There are a lot of other studios that will take up the slack. The studios job is to create entertainment if people are not showing up to their movies then they should do whatever they feel is correct to maximize their profits.
Here is my question to all of the movie sites who wanted this boycott to happen. What exactly that is harmful would Warner Brothers have been doing by following this plan. Truthfully, they would not have been hurting anyone. The biggest impact would have been that the movies would have been made elsewhere.
People who watch movies, myself included at times seem to feel that they are owed something by the movie studios. Guess what, we aren’t. They put out movies to make money. We either go to them or we don’t. If they put out crap we will not watch it. If they create good movies we will watch it.
I should also say that Warner Brothers has denied the comment. I don’t really care one way or the other if it was true or not. Movies will continue to be made and if not by them then by other studios.
John Campea said
October 9 2007 @ 7:28 pm
You said:
“What exactly that is harmful would Warner Brothers have been doing by following this plan.”
It would have been a social harm. I don’t blame WB or any studio for looking at any script and deciding againt them for whatever reason… but to flat out say, without so much as giving those projects a reading or opportunity, that they wouldn’t not even consider scripts with WOMEN in the lead, is socially unacceptable and harmful to a social standard.
Question. What if instead of women, a policy came out that said “We won’t even read scripts that have Gays in the lead”, or blacks, or hispanics, or Muslims?
To say “we won’t even CONSIDER (or give opportunity) to something based on its gender or color or religion or race” is socially unacceptable and should be stood against.
Look, WB looks at 5 scripts, and they feel the one with the women lead stands less of a chance at success than another one of the scripts, fine… that’s business. But to say “don’t bother making any of those 5 scripts we consider ones with blacks in the lead” is reprehensible.
John Allison said
October 10 2007 @ 8:30 am
My biggest thing is that movie audiences have generally spoken. They want their movies to be lead by men. I therefore have no problem with the studios saying that they will listen to the audiences and not waste their time reading scripts that they will not put out.
In my mind the people to blame are the general movie goers. I should specify that I do not include movie enthusiasts (blog readers) in this category. We do not make up a large percentage yet.